Fan Communities in Online Co-viewing of Sports: Impact of Perceived Needs and Benefits

Abstract

The lockdowns forced by the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic made socializing in-person difficult. This difficulty affected the lives of the sports fans adversely as they could not go to the stadium to watch a live game, nor to anywhere else to join others in enjoying the game’s broadcast. They were missing the games and also the social interactions. As they tried to connect and watch live sports simultaneously, various platforms provided with the opportunities. Consumers used OTT platforms with their co-viewing features, third-party video-sharing platforms like Twitch, or video calling applications like Zoom to watch live games and also socialize in parallel. This chapter looks into the underlying needs the consumers feel for opting for these online co-viewing spaces and the benefits they seek from it. It takes an empirical route by getting sports fans to respond to an online questionnaire and takes the uses and gratifications lens to understand the phenomenon. Those who opted for co-viewing had higher needs for entertainment and cognition than those who did not. These two needs and age (in a reverse direction) are predictors for using co-viewing. As far as benefits are concerned, fans earn hedonic and social integrative benefits from co-viewing.